Blind tasting is the best way to assess wine quality unmediated by brand hype. The problem — at least for the taster — is that your later recollection of the wine is not supported by a visual message.
I’m not an expert in matters of memory, though I had been — for a short time and many years ago — a lecturer in a course offered at Wits designed to enhance the speed-reading and memory skills of students and staff. Unsurprisingly, visual association was held to be important in enhancing recall.
So some time after I’ve completed a blind-tasting I have to revisit and “rediscover” the nuances and details of the highest-scoring wines from recent sessions. The experience is somewhat akin to encountering a long absent acquaintance and realising in the first few minutes of the conversation how well you are “connecting”. (There are other occasions where the sensation is less gratifying).
It is a given that wines that score well are well made. Really impressive wines must have something extra, a quality I think of as luminosity: they are “striking” rather than “showy”. “Reliable”, “pedestrian” and “faultless” are not qualities which alone can carry a wine past a solid high eighties rating.
Cynics might suggest that this is obviously a very subjective approach to assessing wine. Why use points at all, they might argue. If what determines a high score is so intangible why not have a five-star or ten-point system where one star means “only drink when desperate” and five stars signify “slaughter your dinner companion and consume the bottle yourself”.
There is some value to that logic: until the 100-point system swamped everything else because of its seemingly transparent and easily correlated ratings system (we understand better the concept of 100% than five stars), that was pretty much how wines were scored and ranked.
It is easy to tell a bad wine from a good one, just as you can easily identify a bad car, a bad meal and a dishonest politician (his lips move when he speaks). In the same way you can tell better from good and best from better. It is really when you enter the celestial altitudes that nuance and subjectivity play a disproportionate role.
So I’m pretty confident I can defend “objectively” scores up to 92/93: they represent excellent wines, not simple, at least on the edge of profound and flawlessly made. Above that there must be something special and memorable enough to nudge them into the rarefied atmosphere of gold medal wine.
My most recent blind-tasting sessions yielded some pretty smart wines. Starting at 93 points (so midway between gold and silver in a serious competition) there were three standout wines: the 2022 Cederberg Ghost Corner Sauvignon Blanc 2022, the Muratie Lady Alice Cap Classique Pinot Noir Rosé 2018 and the Stellenbosch Vineyards Limited Release Verdelho 2018.
All three showed obvious quality, and each was memorable in its own way: the sauvignon blanc was dense and polished, more tropical than grassy and seamlessly assembled. The Muratie presented just the right amount of evolution, plenty of brioche on the palate but still with freshness lifted by a bony zestiness. The verdelho was finely honed, poised, concentrated and yet still delicate.
On 94 points there was the Stellenrust Blueberry Hill Shiraz, which managed the tightrope of superbright fruit, ample but not excessive oaking and savoury spice with aplomb. Equally memorable was the 2020 Dewetshof Riesling, aromatically precise, texturally complete, supple and persistent — and a timely reminder that we should pay more attention to our rieslings.
Finally, on 95 points two wines were really worth tracking down: the Klein Constantia Blanc de Blanc Cap Classique 2019, which offers classical baked bread aromas, followed by a creamy palate imbued with whiffs of grilled hazelnuts. The Alvi’s Drift 2020 Chardonnay Reserve is just as striking: it delivers lovely tropical fruit, fresh grapefruit pith notes, a layered palate and great purity. Retailing for under R150, it is also an amazing bargain.
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